


Wet Red Clay

by TychoBrandt



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: A shame about those who were not worthy of your affection, But love springs eternal, F/F, Gen, Multi, So you saved the ones you cared about, That's commendable
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-02-22 13:18:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13167738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TychoBrandt/pseuds/TychoBrandt
Summary: You prayed to a thousand gods at a thousand altars.You committed a thousand sacrifices upon a thousand ziggurats.You opened a thousand veins, chanted a thousand hymns.One of those gods listened.You asked for this.Three live. How many die? You will see.





	1. Jankowski

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ItsaVikingThing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsaVikingThing/gifts), [notoriousjae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoriousjae/gifts).



> _So, Before the Storm came and went._
> 
> _And so this will too._
> 
> _Let's see just how far you're willing to go._

Loma Prieta. Northridge. Andrew. Katrina. Cedar. Sandy. Look at pictures, news articles, video footage. It'd be for just a moment--if at all--but you'd see her there, more attendant than death itself.

Jankowski sought tragedy because it gave her purpose. There was nothing altruistic about it; if you must call it something, call it a form of particularly productive sadism. Now her lungs are encrusted with smoke and her hands are gnarled with calluses from burn after burn, but her soul flares a-vibrant at the keening of ambulances and emergency alerts.

She has the news on, the coffee is in her hands, yes, but she's not listening to the weather. Her eyes scour the scrolling ticker-tape for anything... well, disastrous. When she sees missing posters--for dogs, cats, people--her heart soars. When an AMBER Alert makes her phone rattle and hiss, her skin tingles. It's an invitation. A challenge. A call that echoes within her amygdala and raises armies at her back.

Do not misunderstand; she does not revel in widows and orphans and civilization laid waste. Perhaps she simply sees silver lining more brightly than others--not a sun lounging behind a grey cloud, but a corona dancing behind a black moon.

By some twist of fate, this time, tragedy sought her.

\---

Joining FEMA was the natural course of action. Balancing one's hobbies and job, making work not feel like work--well, that's the key to a living long, isn't it? Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team.

Or, DMORT, as they say in the trade. Region X.

The 'Region X' part isn't just trivia.

\---

"Rain's getting heavy."

Jankowski flicks her wipers onto a higher setting. "Sure is."

"Wasn't supposed to rain tonight."

Jankowski glances over at Kretsch. Well, partially--she rolls her eyes as she does so. "Weather satellites are fallible, too, you know."

"Apparently." Kretsch throws up a hand in mock outrage. "What the hell am I paying taxes for, then?" He gestures to the wet and winding line of broken asphalt, disappearing just beyond the headlights. "Obviously not _this._ "

She chuckles. They turned off of Highway 6 not too long ago, but she's glad they did. The dark corners and heavy boughs of Tillamook State Forest are a lot more interesting than following a clean yellow line.

It's about 12:30AM when it's a whole lot harder to keep the car from becoming one with nature.

"Shit," Jankowski grunts, shifting into four-wheel-drive and easing the SUV through a sudden stream. 

The silence and the raindrops had been somewhat comforting, once, but the pitter-patter had become more of a himmer-hammer. Kretsch turned on the radio, jumping from station to station.

"Can you just choose _one?_ "

"Chrissakes, hold on."

Through the static comes the reports--one after another. Rockaway Beach, Barview, Cape Meares--torrential rain, lightning strikes one after the other. 

For Arcadia Bay, on every station clear enough, it is brief: _"Evacuate now."_

\---

They're maybe fifteen miles outside of Arcadia Bay. They didn't settle for a nice, round number--but rather for the lone house just a short ways off the road, pressed up against the woodline.

Craftsman style. Green paint, once, now gone grey.

Jankowski beats her fist against the door. "Hello? This is an emergency!" Kretsch circles the house, rapping his knuckles against the windows.

They rendezvous on the porch, soaked, blinking at one another. Kretsch taps one of the porch columns. "What is this place? An inn, or something?"

She kicks down the front door. "Our command center," she said.

"For fuck's sake." He runs a hand down his face, but there's the curve of a smile behind it.

"Obama can write them a check." She shines her flashlight through the foyer, wiping her boots on the mat. "Three stars already."

\---

It's not much of a house, but it's on a hill. That'll do. They begin their fortifications.

Generator, radio, water purifier, the rest comes out of the SUV. Nothing really meant for high-volume emergency response--mostly the crap they're too lazy to take out of the trunk. The shock of the storm is replaced with the banality of routine. The occasional bolt of lightning is more curious than startling, now. 

But there's something different about it. Off. Jankowski feels it, Kretsch feels it, they say nothing about it but they both know. 

Kretsch pulls the headset down, lets it rest around his shoulders. "Can't pick up anything from Arcadia." 

"Try again."

"That was the 'again.' Rockaway--"

"We almost got swept away coming here. Rain's even worse. The highways will look like the Mile of Death out there if they just go straight east."

Kretsch sighs. "Once more," he utters, slipping on the headset and crouching in front of the radio. Jankowski gathers up some reflectors and flares and opens the front door--and nearly falls onto her ass.

"Be careful out there," Kretsch says automatically. Jankowski ignores the note of actual concern buried underneath.

"Yeah," she says, and into the storm she goes.

She trudges down the short lane back to the road. The way inland is properly flooded, now--water goes to her ankles. At a loss, she zip-ties a few flares to the old wooden fence bordering the road. She'll need a hammer, some nails, some...

For a moment, she just stares westward. It's pitch black outside, but she can feel it--something massive, just beyond her reach. She can feel it... turning. Out there. In her.

Jankowski shakes her head. She can't hear a damned thing in this rain. Drowns out her own heartbeat.

But she has her eyes, and she can see the headlights that emerge out of the fog.

She waves her flashlight at the wet pavement, light rolling like a kaleidoscope across the water.

The truck slows, its brakes keening. Jankowski runs--well, wades--up to the driver's side. 

She taps on the window. "Hey--hey! You can't get any farther. The water's too high--" And that's about the point where she stops and looks at who's in the cab.

A girl with blue hair.

A girl with blood running down her face.

And a girl so pale and so still Jankowski thought she was dead.

Twigs and leaves and mud and blood plaster them all.

The blue one turns, still gripping the steering wheel with trembling hands. Her eyes are haunted and blown-out and blue.

"Please," she whispers. 

Somewhere, out there, Jankowski feels it turning a little faster.


	2. Kretsch

It is 1:13AM PST. Jankowski stands in front of the bay window, watches the rain strike the pane, and thinks.

This isn't unusual behavior for her. She's usually looking at something, in some regard, and thinking. Even when she is looking at nothing, she's probably thinking. 

Her body is not weary. Her bones hum with current. The moisture on her skin could be rain or sweat, she doesn't know. She exhales tiredly. Her breath fogs the glass in Lichtenberg figures. 

She has heard of people who can, supposedly, through the power of sheer will, not think.

 _Not think?_ She envies that. Can hardly imagine.

Jankowski pushes the towels packed up against the floorgap between door and threshold, frowning at how they're already drenched. She cracks the front door open, clings to one of the porch columns to brace against the wind, and shines her flashlight through the darkness. She can see the road down the hill from here--or, where the road _was._ The water has risen, now. If she were foolish enough to wade into those waters, they'd likely be lapping below her knee. She's seen 4x4's get swept away in less.

Lightning flashes, leaves new veins crisscrossing her vision. She blinks, begins to count: _one--_

And thunder makes itself heard.

"Fuck," she mutters, but she can't hear herself for the ringing in her skull. She closes the door and piles the towels back up.

\---

When she returns, the three girls are huddled around the space heater in the living room. At her behest, they had shed their wet clothes and wrapped themselves in thermal blankets instead, shivering all the while. There was only so much dry cloth to be had, even after a thorough looting of the linen closet--Jankowski helped put their hair up into ziptie ponytails. Kretsch hung their clothes up to dry then made himself scarce, polite as he is.

She's already given them a lookover by the light of the LED laterns--it wasn't so bad. No cuts, no bruises, no rashes. The mouse of a girl with a bloody nose was remedied with a few tissues.

"Don't tilt your head back," Jankowski says, maybe a little too abruptly--the girl gives a start. "Blood will go down your throat." The freckles in the shape of a girl wipes at her nose, smearing it across her face, nodding. She stares down at the carpet, now vivid with her own red asterism.

Blue girl was just cold. But the other one... is less responsive. Gently guided by the other two girls, never making eye contact. 

Aside from the single syllable that came from the blue girl, they haven't said a thing. Jankowski doesn't blame them. It's shock. No different than watching your friend get bisected by a train or step on a land mine. But she'll need to get some information out of them eventually--the condition of the road they came in on, if Arcadia Bay had power when they were leaving... any possibility of other survivors. 

Jankowski sits down in front of the heater, cross-legged, joining their little circle. She drums wet fingers on wet knees, waiting for one of them to acknowledge her.

Waiting's over. "Feeling better?" she offers, at a loss for anything else.

The blue girl studies her in the dim light. Even her eyes are blue. "Yeah," she says weakly. "Yeah, we..."

"Thank you," the mouse girl breathes out shakily. 

Jankowski shrugs to hide her surprise at actually getting a response. "Nah, nah. It's my thing. It's..." She looks at the pale girl. "What about you?"

The girl turns, and Jankowski stops breathing. Those eyes--she's seen those eyes before. Peering out at her from under rubble. From the depths of cellars. 

"Rachel." The blue girl reaches over, brushes her fingers against the pale girl's. " _Rachel_."

The eyes change. Pupils bloom. "I'm here," the Rachel says aloud, to everyone, to no one, to herself. "It's okay." She shrinks back into her blanket, pulling it closer. Her feather earring sticks to her neck.

"Well, keep your hands and feet warm. The electricity's out, but the plumbing still works." Praise to whoever invented the septic tank. "I'd give you more blankets, but in case anyone else comes through--" Jankowski stops, watches the three faces. "Was... anyone else leaving?"

Mouse girl shakes her head; her nose sprouts blood again. Jankowski quelled the urge to wipe the damned thing herself--blue girl beats her to it anyway. "No," blue says, pressing the tissues against mouse's face. "It just happened so fast."

"It wasn't supposed to--" Mouse hiccuped. "It wasn't supposed to happen like that, that _fast._ Not like--"

"Max, shush." Blue girl wipes away the last of the red. It collects beneath her fingernails. 

She does _shush,_ for a moment. They sit there, cold and wary, listening to the rain and wind gradually yet steadily becoming louder.

"Alright," Jankowski barks, hurrying to fill the silence. "Standing orders, alright? With the lightning, don't linger by the windows and let's all stay off the second floor. The pipes and wiring--" She stops herself, starts again. "Kretsch put your truck around back, so if you need anything, let us know, we'll get it. And I know you're all probably really tired, but you can't sleep right now, in case we have to move or help anyone else who shows up."

"No one's coming," Rachel murmurs. 

"I didn't think so either, yet here you are," Jankowski says, rising to her feet and stretching. Rachel opens her mouth to respond, but it slowly falls closed with a click. "Oh, and--I'm Jan. You need anything--and I mean _anything--_ find us." Jankowski pauses, mulls over their state of dress. "Well, find me."

"Chloe," the blue girl says.

Jan nods, and leaves them be. She doesn't know what else to say.

\---

Kretsch is sitting on the floor, looking intently at his radio setup. His hand is hovering just over the dial on the transceiver.

"Hey."

He doesn't move.

"Hey." Jankowski waves a hand in front of his face. "They're mostly dressed, now. You're free to wander the house."

For a full moment, Kretsch remains perfectly still. Then, he blinks and rubs at his eyes. "Hey yourself," he grunts, pulling his headset off. "So much for the beach, right? Probably won't be much sand left after all this."

"I'll cope. What'd you manage?"

"The..." he gestures at the setup. "I can't get through to anyone. Too much interference, from the lightning, or--" His face twists in thought. "Might be on our end, need a better antenna. But I thought I heard someone, for a little bit, there."

Jankowski squints at the glowing monitors. "What'd they say?"

"I dunno. Sounded like... something familiar. Oldschool emergency broadcast, maybe." There's no sureness in his voice.

"You okay, man?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. This is just weird, that's all."

"No shit."

"No, I'm serious. This is different."

Jankowski looks at the headset, still clutched in Kretsch's hand. His knuckles are white.

"Let me listen."

"No."

They stare at each other, for a moment.

 _"... What?"_

"I mean... you won't hear anything. I sure didn't," Kretsch says quickly, resting the headset upon its cradle. Carefully. "We'll try again later, alright?"

"Yeah, sure." Jankowski glances back at the living room, lowers her voice. "Good thing we feasted like animals before we drove, huh?"

"We've only got enough MREs to last them a day, Jan."

"There's some frozen shit in the kitchen. Well--thawing, now. Some canned stuff in the cupboards. Not much--not quality, either. Guess this is on some snowbird's migration route."

"And if more come?"

"Then we'll take care of it," Jan says resolutely. "Like we always have."

Kretsch works his jaw, his face all shadow and green glow from the light of the monitors. "Yeah."


	3. Jankowski

It is 2:02:02.02AM PST.

Jankowski is pacing, teeth gritted, eyes like knives.

Were you to watch her, now, it wouldn't look at all like pacing--it looks like she's examining equipment and watching the road out the bay window and generally being quite busy. But, in truth--she doesn't know what to do, now. She's become so damned efficient at this kind of thing that she's run out of things _to_ do. And she doesn't just want to sit on her ass in front of the three girls, as if she's resigning to the mercy of a fucking weather system.

So she looks over the propane, the MREs, the now-drenched towels lining the doors, the lanterns, the heaters, the useless solar micropanels. Over and over again until she feels like she's getting redundant. And then once more.

She puts her flashlight up to the windowpane (again), peers at the road through the growing fog (again), sees the current swell and throb, murky and uneven with mud and leaves and branches and life. No one is coming. No one is coming on the road. No one.

Jankowski doesn't need to look at the sky to know it: above her, around her, the storm grows, and grows, grows like any other living thing. Grows with her like hair and nails and new molars. A raw cold seeps in through the walls. Her breath drifts before her in vague shapes, now, and her imagination can't give them form.

This isn't right. It shouldn't be this cold. 

Jankowski's fingers hurt, swell beneath her nails, leave her without prints. She keeps her fists balled up and shoved into her jacket pockets, but it hardly helps. Her toetips hurt. Her lips and nose are numb.

October in Oregon. Global warming, climate change, yes, all considered. But it shouldn't be this _cold,_ it--

She looks down at the hardwood panels of the kitchen floor, candleflame in her skull a-flickering. They could pry up the boards, one by one, nail them up against the windows. Work fast, work feverishly. 'They' meaning her and Kretsch, of course, but that would take time and may very well be a waste of energy. And they need nails. And a hammer. The house's garage was oddly austere--probably wouldn't find anything if she checked it again.

She knows she needs to wait but she doesn't know how. So she refuses, and she moves instead.

The fog outside has grown. She can't see the road. What road?

Jankowski doesn't really dream. Thinks in her sleep, yes, but not dreaming, no. It was a long nine months in that womb.

But as she moves about, she imagines this is what it's like when people talk about breathing and walking underwater. In dreams, that is.

\---

They can probably hear her stomping around upstairs. Then again, over the thunder, maybe they can't. Jankowski put the thought out of mind and stuffs it into a dresser drawer.

In that deep-sea darkness she rips the sheets from the beds, throws open the closet doors, dumps the warmest clothing she can find into the sheets and ties the bundle all together. The offering of the belowstairs linen closet isn't enough. Not to keep five people above ambient temperature.

"Put these on," Jankowski intones to the girls as she dumps the clothing on the carpet. Perhaps a bit more forcefully than needed, judging by how mouse--Max jumps.

They look upon her expression, and they pick over the clothes. An hour ago they may have protested, but now--now, with frayed veins of frost creeping up the windowpanes? No complaints. Oh, the girl with the feather earring--Rachel, was it?--eyes a woolen Irish sweater with some disdain, but swallows her pride and pulls it over her head.

"Layers," Jankowski says. She doesn't know what else to say. She leans down and turns up the heater a fraction before walking away.

\---

Nearly all of the food in the cabinets is canned.

Jankowski breathes a sigh of relief. And then regrets it, as she must watch the mist of her lungs wander about the kitchen. 

Nutrient-dense as the MREs are, they won't last forever. And even if those girls have to live on--wild rice? Black beans? Lentils? Expired multivitamins? Boiled rainwater?--Jankowski will see that they live, whether they like it or not.

She pauses as she passes the kitchen counter.

She reaches over, slowly, and draws the knives out of the cutlery block.

She opens a random cupboard and carefully lays them behind a stack of sheet pans.

Jankowski nods to herself and goes to check on Kretsch.

\---

Kretsch isn't at the radio.

Jankowski turns her head--slowly, scanning all corners of the room--slowly. He's _somewhere,_ near, she can feel him, he didn't just up and--

"Do you... need help?"

Soft voice. Craftshop felt and sandpaper. She gives a start all the same, but plays it off in a shrug.

"No," Jankowski says automatically, casually, over a shoulder. "Kretsch and I have it under control." 

"Oh," she says, glancing around the Kretschless room. Jankowski looks at her, really looks at her. With her eyes, this time.

The one called Max is standing there, looking back at her appraisingly, blue eyes in the rainy morning gloom. Even bundled up with all those shirts and sweaters and blankets, Jankowski can see by the way the clothes fall against her frame that she's lean, thin, hard. There's a hunch curving her spine, but it's not out of any teenage gracelessness.

Her face is hatchet-gaunt and her coppery freckles stand out like stars in hell. She's pale.

Too pale.

Pallor mortis.

Her hand lashes out, latching onto the girl's arm.

Jankowski lets go of Max's wrist.

Max hisses, pulls her hand back, fearful and suspicious. She keeps her right hand raised, for a moment, fingers splayed wide, before letting it fall. 

No, not pallor mortis. She's just cold. Endotherm. That's all. The bones in her hand move freely, the muscles twitching and awake with fermenting adrenaline.

"Your skin is too p--cold. Put on another shirt or two." A pause. "And a scarf," so she doesn't have to look at those freckles.

The girl nods, for a moment even paler than before, but then her cheeks flush pink with--with life. "O-okay," she stammers.

\---

"It's gone, isn't it?"

Jankowski glances back. The blue girl--Kloe? Chloe?--has joined her at the bay window, staring into the fog. Fog, black but for the brief flashes of lightning that illuminated.

"Arcadia Bay," she said, as it if needed saying. "There's... there's nothing left of it." She works her throat. "And no one--"

"We'll find out tomorrow," Jankowski declares with a sureness she does not feel. "That's that." She wishes that the girls would just stay in one place, around the damned heater, so she wouldn't have to interact with them or possibly acknowledge that things aren't going as planned. She wishes that the thunder was so loud they couldn't speak to each other. 

They stand there and watch as the fog roils in the wind and downpour.

For a moment, whiteness. Patient light at the end of the tunnel. Then the fall of thunder.

"What?" Jankowski says.

Chloe just shakes her head and turns, padding away on many-socked feet.

Jankowski had heard her clearer than any thunder.

_"Like tears in the rain."_

_It's not time to die,_ she thinks, crossing her arms and watching the frost crawl.

\---

Jankowski stands in front of the door.

She reaches for the doorknob--

It's warm. It's so deliciously and gloriously warm. Sunlight and embers.

She almost turns it. Almost. But she looks behind her and sees the girl--the blue feather attached to a girl--the Rachel--with her eyes open wide, too wide, watching her.

Jankowski goes back to look at the radio.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Season one is over. Season two, one day. Until then... let's go all the way to hell._
> 
> _That's the price you'd pay, after all._


	4. Kretsch

It is 2:59:99.9AM.

Or, Jankowski thinks it is. Yeah. She hasn't looked at her watch in... a while. She can feel it, of course, constricting her wrist, pulling her blood vessels together, ticking away like her life. But she doesn't look at it. Why? Well, she isn't all too sure.

She's cold. Call it frigid, freezing, whatever--she's fucking cold. She tries to remember being this cold--this numb to the world and all the pain in it. Even through snow, and sleet, and rain--nothing in her memory pulls close to this coldness. Not a thing.

She drove through Canada once, to get to Alaska, and her car slid on the black ice--right into a snowbank. She sat on the hood of her car, in the falling snow, feeling the engine grow cool beneath her. That was cold, sure, fine. But not like this. There was still a sky and a sun to remind her that, somewhere, warmth was real.

She remembers darkness, of course. When her parents told her to go to bed, or when the electricity was out, or when she went hiking in the deepening autumn and tried to see how far she could go without drawing her flashlight. She does not fear darkness--but this false twilight, this LED hell, this lithium-ion hell, it's different.

In this pseudodarkness she sees the three girls, huddled together around the heater. Blood has crusted around Max's nose, red and raw. Tissues are scattered in her lap. Max looks at her. They're all looking at her, waiting for salvation. She has none, so Jankowski looks away. 

\---

She is weary. Not tired--she could not sleep even if there was no rain, no thunder, no lighting making every window a portrait of blindness. If she lays down and closes her eyes she will not wake up. This she knows.

She is weary. Through the fog she cannot see the rain but she can hear it, heavy, and in it she hears it, turning, turning so much like the breath that breathed life into all living things.

She recognizes it so well, now.

She resists the urge to turn with it. Not now. Not yet.

\---

Noise. Something comes down the stairs. 

Jankowski is quick, pivots, shoulders braced, chin down.

"Where were you?"

"Bathroom," Kretsch says, perturbed by Jankowski's forcefulness. 

Jankowski looks at Kretsch.

Or, rather, the figure at the base of the stairs that looks and sounds like Kretsch. 

"...Taking a piss," he obviates. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she says. "You?"

"Dick almost froze off," he grunts. "So, with my life in retrospect, I've been better."

"Huh," she says, looking at him sidelong. She follows his gaze to one of the windows, watches it for a moment.

"I'm... gonna check the radio," he says, and his shadow moves across the floor.

\---

She wonders where the animals went.

Not the human animals. No, of course not. Not those ones. The birds, the rabbits and squirrels, the deer--those animals. Did they turn their heads to the west and see death coming and run? Did they know?

Or were they, too, swept away so lovelessly? Did they dig their burrows, but not deep enough? Did the ocean reclaim its long-lost salt in a great swallowing gasp?

Did the ocean dye the world blue and grey and black once more? As it was? As it should be? As it will be?

Blood made blue again. As it was. As it should be. As it will be.

\---

"Jankowski?" Kretsch's voice slithers into the room across the floor, hesitant, probing. "That you?"

"Who else would it be?"

Kretsch barely opens his mouth before he snaps it closed. "I--Yeah, nevermind." He approches, appears, a shadow without darkness. "Guess what this boy scout found?"

"I don't even want to know." She's honest.

He lifts a zip-locked plastic bag, lets it swing like a petrochemical pendulum. "I scooped it up with everything else in their glove compartment. Didn't notice at the time, but..."

Jankowski knows buds when she sees them. Pupils dilate. "Seriously?"

Kretsch shrugs. "Not for us. For _them._ To take the edge off."

"Or make them so paranoid they run off into the woods screaming."

Kretsch sighs, stuffs the bag into a pocket. Jankowski takes note. "Well... when you put it like that..."

Jankowski doesn't usually put it like that, but she did, this time, for some reason.

\---

"This is my fault," Kretsch mutters.

"Don't start."

"It was my idea to go to Arcadia." He runs a hand down his face, clamps his jaw in anger. "Shit. My idea."

"We're here now. _Here._ We work with it. Through it."

"Yeah," he says with a shallow, nervous sigh. "Yeah."

"Besides... if we hadn't come out there, what would _they_ have done? Drowned in a ditch, somewhere."

Kretsch looks at the rafters, the ceiling, that LED darkness. "Maybe that would've--"

"Don't finish that fucking sentence."

He chuckles. Comes back to Earth, back to her, is still Kretsch in body and soul. "Alright, Jan. Alright."

\---

Jankowski idly traces in the air with two fingers.

She wishes she had... spraypaint. Green. Or... or red.

No, she thinks dully. It doesn't matter, in this rain, in this fog.

She would spray "FIVE DEAD" on the outer wall of the house facing the road, if she could. In massive letters, capitalized. To prepare those who come after, if any do.

But she can't.

So she doesn't.

\---

Go deep amongst the forests of Arcadia--

May as well be amongst the redwoods, or the empty quarter. Cut down one tree and two take its place. The sounds of civilization are smothered, strangled by birdsong and canopies of pine.

Hell to the lonesome. Paradise to the hermit.

\---

The light from the radio setup falls over her, washes her face and her hands in a soft cool green.

She sits, cross-legged. Her back is straight, chin up. She carefully slides the headset over her skull, the headphones feeling strange against the numb cartilage of her ears.

Jankowski does something she rarely does.

Jankowski listens.

And listens.

And casts herself out, out, out far into that vast radio silence.

And in the static...

Between the static...

Underneath the static...

She listens.

For a lone moment, the thunder ceases. The rain softens. Or perhaps it is her imagination.

She casts her eyes down. Bites her lip. Takes a breath.

"If I give them to you," she whispers. 

\---

It is 3:XX:XX.XAM.

A million years ago this land was under the sea.

Cycles. Weather. Tides. Moon. Stars.

It is only fitting that things return to the way they once were.

It is so simple. The door. The door, Jankowski. Open the door, Jankowski. Open the door, Jankowski, and walk through it. Open the door and let the mist in and all will be clear.

But she is not ready. Will she ever be ready in this lifetime? Faith cannot bridge a chasm that stretches on forever.

Jankowski turns. Turns. Not too far. Just far enough.

Far enough to look at her.

"Max," she growls.

The girl gives a start, blue eyes wide.

"I know it was you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And here we go._


	5. God I

It is time.

It isn't time.

The world turns faster than the moondial's shadow.

No time, here.

This is the bone-slender hour where no prayers are heard.

"What?" Max's voice is sudden and raw from the cold not meant for the ones that breathe, the emptiness where sound should be.

Jankowski lifts her right hand, spreads her fingers, spreads them like the human diaspora--just long enough, then lets it fall. "You." She suppresses the urge to laugh and scream, but her voice swells, swells, corpses in high tide. "You did this."

"I--" Max fumbles--"I did look _at_ the radio, I'm sorry, I just wanted to know if anyone--"

"No. No." A sharp intake of breath. "Not the radio." Jankowski takes a slow step forward. "This," she hisses, gesturing angrily at the window. "This. All of this. All of this is you. You. All of it. All."

Her eyes are wide and darting but there's no confusion. No ignorance. Fear. Not of the unknown. Of consequence. "I--I don't--"

And like a vision Chloe is there, teeth bared, eyes flashing. "Back the fuck off."

"Jan, what the Hell are you--" Kretsch flickers into the living room, gripping a bundle of something heavy. 

He sees the scene. Stage right, the Chloe and Rachel, shielding Max with shivering bodies. Stage left, Jankowski, eyeless, casting a shadow across the world.

Looking not very Jankowskian. 

He carefully sets the cord of wood next to the fireplace. 

"Kretsch--" A note of warning.

"I was, uh, going to get a fire going--"

_"Kretsch."_

"I told you," he mutters.

Silence.

"I told you not to listen to the damn radio, Jan. You never listen. You never--"

"What--" Jankowski jabs at the room with the radio. The faint green glow can be seen from here, soaked into the floorboards, turning shadows into black static. "What the _fuck_ was that?"

"What did it tell you?"

Jankowski rounds on the Rachel. Looks at her, hard.

Stone meets stone.

"You know what it said," Jankowski growls.

"Say it, then. Prove it to me."

"Jan, don't--" Kretsch steps forward, but stops as Jan holds him at arm's length.

"It wants to go back," Jankowski says triumphantly, taking another step forward.

It is their great collective imagination, no doubt, that makes it seem that the wind and the rain and the thunder cease.

Jankowski looms closer. "Back to what it was, back to--"

"Stop it," Max says.

"Back to the way things should be--"

She shakes her head, hands clamped over her ears. " _Stop it!_ "

"You know I can't, don't you? You know that." Her tone is perfectly smooth, perfectly flat, reflects no light. "I can't. Only you can. You--"

Something seizes Jankowski by the collar and drags her backward across the floor, choking. Max and Chloe and Rachel are suddenly far away at the end of a dark tunnel. She lashes out, feels her knuckles clip a clammy jaw.

"Jan, will you--"

She twists against the grip, drives a knee into his stomach and drives him back with a punch. But it's not quite right--like she can't touch him, not really, she's just vaguely brushing against the old idea of Kretschness. 

"You're--not--Kretsch," she grinds out.

"You're not Jan," he mumbles, pushing himself up with the wall--or maybe just slithering into uprightness. "You're--I don't know who or what you are. But you're not Jan."

She laughs. A gutteral flutter of a thing. "I haven't seen you shiver once. You're wearing one fucking jacket. You--"

"So are you," he shoots back.

And then they look at each other, absurdly, then at the three girls, all bundled up around the heater, staring at them.

He holds out his hands, wavering in the light of the LEDs. "Just... please. Please. I heard it... you heard it. But..."

"We have to go ba--"

"Back to _what,_ Jan? We don't know what any of this fucking means!"

Jan turns around, runs fingers through her hair agitatedly. Blood scrapes through her veins. The static in her head is unbearable--unbearably quiet. She knows, she knows, she knows the _truth,_ but truth doesn't know human language. 

The window has frosted over completely, now. 

"... Max," Kretsch says gently. He makes to step towards her, but Chloe and Rachel stiffen.

"That's close enough," Rachel says sharply. Jankowski glances over her shoulder, to make sure not-Kretsch doesn't try anything un-Kretschlike.

He sighs again, stops. "Okay, I'll... I'll stay here." He sits down, cross-legged. "Riiight here... yeah." He looks at the dark hearth. Back to the girls. "This... isn't an ordinary storm, is it?"

"Not a storm," Jankowski mutters.

"It's okay, Max," Kretsch says. "We're not going to hurt you, alright? I swear. Jan just wants what's best."

"Bullshit."

"Chloe," Rachel murmurs.

Jankowski sets her jaw. Stares out the window.

"We can... figure this out," Kretsch says, drawing from his well of words not yet frozen to the far corners of his brain. "Or... at least, help you. Because something's wrong. We can see--feel--that much. But... we can't help you unless you tell us, okay?"

Max is looking down at her hands. Working at her hands. There's blood encrusted underneath her fingernails. Won't go away.

Jankowski squints into the fog. 

Rachel drapes an arm over Max's shoulders, dips her mouth to her ear. "You don't have to tell them anything, Max."

"That's... true," Kretsch admits, gripping his knees. "But... if you did--"

Jankowski leans forward, nose almost touching the iced glass. "Is that...?"

Shapes in the mist, silhouetted by the downpour. 

"No, that's not right," she muses.

Kretsch is already on his feet, somehow. Limbs alive. "Okay, get those spare towels, they're going to be--"

Jankowski grabs his arm. "Don't touch the door. Look."

So Kretsch does.

And... the figures don't seem to be getting closer. Or trying to shelter themselves from the rain.

They're just... standing there. Standing?

"Back door locked?"

"Yes," Kretsch breathes. 

"Get the lights."

Kretsch is rooted there, staring at the window, then the cold fireplace.

"The _lights._ "

He finally shifts. Rachel gets up and moves to the window.

"Stay away from--" Rachel knocks away her hand and peers through the pane, her breath misting against the rime. 

Then Rachel glances sidelong at Jankowski. "No one's out there."

Jankowski looks again. Recoils.

Closer, now.

"Get away from the window," she barks flatly. Rachel doesn't move. _"Away,"_ through gritted teeth, tongueless. And like that, Rachel returns to Max's side. 

The room grows darker as Kretsch kills each lantern. The last thing Jankowski sees is blood running from Max's eyes. They look at each other. Jankowski knows that look.

Darkness, then.

"Quiet," she whispers.

Wind against the house. Rain against the roof.

And the door begins to move.


	6. God II

Time--

So this is what a world without time feels like.

The figures are drawing nearer to the house. But for all the closer they come, they become no more distinct. They almost look like--

Jankowski whips around to face the girls, waving sharply. "Get away from the windows. Middle of the room."

"What--"

_"Now!"_ she roars at them.

She has only moments to act--and in each of those moments, she dwells for a lifetime, wondering if there were any other way.

The final moment passes her by. Even if she isn't--even if she's not--she feels Jankowskian, in this moment. 

She kicks the retaining towels away from the doorjamb, frost spitting and crackling. Water begins to seep freely from underneath.

"Block the door behind me," she barks to the Kretschlike shape, suddenly more brilliant in its Kretschness. "And whatever happens--"

"I know," it--he--Kretsch says. They look at each other--just once, and for a moment, Jankowski falters, and then--

"No!" A grip upon her arm--there she appears, Rachel, eyes fierce and flashing. "I can't let you--no one else should have to--"

Strength from resignation outpaces strength from virtue. Jankowski plants her palm against Rachel's chest and shoves her away. Her nails leave long scratches along her arm.

She turns, grips the knob, and opens the door.

\---

The rain is cold, no, colder--cold like open wounds exposed to air--worse than ice, for numbness never comes. Cuts through her jacket, her boots. Makes sure she knows that, beyond pretense, she is just another mammal, shivering under an open sky.

In the far distance, she hears the faint slam of a door.

And then--warm. The rain is warm, mingles in her blood, swelling deliciously just to to bursting. Warm, tasting of salt, of copper. 

Lightning snaps around her--blooming shadowless like noonlight, warm and near.

\---

There it is, stretching out before and above and below her. She sees it there, Arcadia Bay--

Or an idea of it.

She sees Max moving through life--but there is more than one Max, in more than one place, in more than one time, but they are all moving at once, sometimes parallel, sometimes perpendicular--

But moving, always moving, always turning, and turning the lives of those who drew too near.

Turning, twisting. Wrapping the world around here in cords of sinew, in knots of veins. Pulling upon the stones, the trees, the clouds, the earth itself.

Jankowski does not pretend to understand.

\---

_If I gave them to you,_ she thinks.

Jankowski remembers what she is--what she inhabits, possesses. Bones, flesh, blood--awaken! She wills her legs to move. Her ankles drag in the swirling water, salt froth collecting on her legs.

Farther out, further down. The way.

And she senses it, her neck prickes in anticipation--

First, grasping and scraping at her back, and then--

A hard, desperate grip. Fingers constricted tight around her spine, pulling.

Pulling her back. Back to the house. Through space, yes, but...

Through time.

She digs her feet into the mud. Grits her teeth.

_Max, you have to let me go._

She can't hear her or see her--there is only rain and mist and storm, here--but Jankowski can feel Max, feel her shaking her head, feel her teeth gnashing.

The storm--the thing in the shape of a storm--turns, and turns the world with it. Max turns--the other way--and tries to turn Jankowski with her.

She is small. But she is strong, in her way. Stronger than Jankowski, maybe. 

_Max, you're killing yourself._

Jankowski had seen her eyes in the house. Chloe, Rachel--eyes full of guilt, awe, a secretive joy. But Max--

Her eyes were tunnels to martyrdom. 

_I know you didn't want this, Max. I don't blame you._

_You've done enough._

_Let me go._

The pull becomes stronger. Jankowski strains, feels her bones, her sinew, her muscle, her skin, all stretching beyond tautness, stretching apart, stretching backward--

_Will you do it all over again? Just for me?_

There--a moment of weakness, the pull slackens, and Jankowski breaks free, rushes forward and stumbles into the water upon hands and knees.

_Go and be with them._

She can feel Max crying out, begging her to return.

_Goodbye, Max._

Jankowski walks.

She needs no stones to weigh her down.

She walks.

The water rises past her chest, her neck, and then--

Silence.


	7. Kretsch

Kretsch lets his eyes fall to his watch.

It's... it is 3:02AM, Greenwich. Caesium. The hands drift across the face like long gods over the water. Clockwise.

Finally.

He stops bracing the front door with his body, lets his shoulders and neck ease. Hydrogen seeps, steeps, settles in his joints--he's so tired--but he keeps his hand locked rigid around the doorknob.

The air... the air isn't so cold, now, and the doorknob isn't like ice. Gradually, he unfurls his thawing fingers and backs away from the door, inch by inch, moment by moment.

The cacophany of the storm fades, fades into something more familiar. Just soft rain on the roof of the house. Hum of wind against the walls. It's all so mild comapared to what it had been before that Kretsch can hardly hear it.

And he just stands there, looking at the door, not daring to imagine what lays beyond.

Maybe if he just stands here, forever, forever and ever, and never opens that door, then maybe--

"Mister Kretsch?"

It takes him a full second to acknowledge it. The sound, the words. He's too weary to summon the usual "just Kretsch" from the depths of his throat.

He turns. Ligament and tendon twist. Rachel is standing suddenly near, peering out the window, up on her tippy-tiptoes to look over the receding frost.

"It's stopping," she whispers, a note of wonder daring to emerge. "Look, it's... it's gone."

She makes for the door, but Kretsch quickly bars her with an unsteady arm.

"Let's wait for morning," he says, eyes ever moving. "Just... to be safe."

"But Jan--"

Kretsch shakes his head. He pretends he didn't hear her. What else can he do? He looks back into the living room. "Chloe? Max?"

"We're still alive, if that's what you're asking!" Chloe calls out, her voice, in the quiet, now noticeably hoarse from shouting over the storm. 

"Good," he mumbles. "Good." He'd like to stop being alive, for just a little while. Respite of some sort. But he doesn't have that luxury.

"Max!" 

Kretsch turns. Rachel is cradling Max, wiping the blood from her face with a trembling hand. 

"It's okay," Chloe says. "She--this happens, sometimes." But Rachel looks stricken. Kretsch reaches down to press two fingers against a carotid.

"Like she's asleep," he murmurs. "Just keeps her head to the side, okay? With the blood and--" 

Chloe nods vehemently. "I will."

\---

"We need to go."

Have four words ever roused such action? Maybe. He is dead to history. This is all that exists, now.

Kretsch moves with intent--he collects the equipment, organizes it, piles it in the foyer. What they do not need, he leaves. 

He looks at the radio. In the morning light, it looks almost normal. He thinks back to those years ago when he first bought the thing--if only he knew. He would've smashed the thing to pieces.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and packs it into its box. He'll destroy it when it's time. Until then...

Chloe appears in his vision. He blinks as she holds out a hand, waggling her fingers. "Keys."

"Need something from your truck?"

"Yeah. The _truck._ "

Kretsch shakes his head. "You can come back for it when this insanity is over. But for now, we stay together."

He sees the muscles in her face contract--the jaw tighten, the brow lower. 

He sighs. "Please, Chloe--I need you to watch Max," Kretsch says.

Chloe looks away for a moment--pointedly not looking at the unconscious Max at their feet or the Rachel tending to her--and nods. 

Kretsch hands her the keys, and she pockets them.

\---

Kretsch unceremoniously throws everything in the trunk. If anything breaks, it wasn't worth it anyway. He climbs into the front seat, takes a breath.

Rachel and Chloe support Max across their laps in the backseat. It's awkward, and Max will probably be chafing later from the way the seatbelt is biting her skin, but Kretsch won't have any less. 

"Keep her neck straight, head on its side. If she vomits, just let her do it, then clean her mouth out."

Rachel and Chloe look back at him. 

"What?" he says, suddenly self-conscious. 

"Aren't we going to wait for Jan?" There's something in the way Rachel says it that it almost borders on rhetorical. Not unkindly, but--

Kretsch turns and starts the engine. "There's someone you can stay with," he says.

\---

They drive. Kretsch avoids their gazes in the rearview mirror. Sometimes Rachel's eyes catch his, and he sees her mouth open slightly--but then she stops, lets the silence continue. He mentally thanks her for that one mercy.

The road is hardly a road. Over mud and gravel and dirt and branches they go--and on a few occasions, Kretsch has to stop the car and move fallen foliage out of the way. Between saw and hatchet it isn't all too difficult--but whenever Kretsch sees a cloud drift overhead, his heart quickens and he struggles to work faster.

"I can help," Chloe says when Kretsch clambers back into the car.

"Need you to stay with Max," he utters, and turns the key. 

\---

It isn't far from Arcadia Bay to Portland--two hours, usually. 

But between the washed out roads and the stops and driving slow to not jostle Max, it's more like three hours.

They're about halfway there when suddenly the whole car vibrates. Rachel yelps and Kretsch nearly careens off the road.

Their phones. They've struck functional cell towers.

Kretsch watches in the rearview. Chloe pulls out her phone, puts a fist to her mouth. "Mom," she chokes out. Rachel reaches over, grips her knee. "She... she's alive. She and David--" and then the tears come. Kretsch looks away.

Rachel digs through Max's bag, pulls out her phone, begins scrolling--

"Oh my god," she whispers. "Kate... and Victoria... Warren..." 

Rachel lets out a long breath, and then laughs--a clear and loud and true note. 

"They're alive," she says, equal parts joy and catharsis. "They're _alive._ "

Kretsch looks at the road. Looks at the road and thinks of the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Extremely unpolished, but I can't leave you all hanging._
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> _Meanwhile... Life is Strange 2, huh?_


	8. Yvette

Kretsch pulled off his watch and shoved it into his pocket some time ago.

The phones have been silenced--thankfully. The vibrations--each one making him go rigid--were so incessant Kretsch thought he was going to veer off the road.

Pine forest gives way to the symmetry of lawn and sidewalk. Where they had once passed trees they now pass streetlights and telephone poles, all too equidistant. Kretsch rarely finds himself in Portland, much less Hillsboro--but here he is. He cannot see the sun--the sky is a slate of clouds.

They're in the driveway. Kretsch kills the engine. 

Rachel scrutinizes the mailbox, then the house itself. It's a nice, unremarkably suburban and modern house. Expected of Hillsboro. "Is this the place?"

"Yeah," Kretsch says. With some effort, he pries his fingers from the steering wheel. Clasps his hands together instead. 

He twists in his seat to face the girls--Rachel and Chloe are looking at him expectantly. "Before--" He stops, looks down at Max, her breathing slow yet steady. "I-- look. I won't tell anyone about... Max. About _that._ " He opens his right hand, then gestures it westward. "Okay? I promise."

They just look at him. Not quite suspiciously--but in appraisal. 

"We keep the story straight. Don't give too many details." He looks beyond them, for a moment. "Jan... we lost her in the water when she was pulling Rachel out. That's it."

Silence. Air softly whistles through Max's nose.

"Well... I'll... go see who's home." Kretsch gets out of the car.

He feels coolness against his skin, twitches, looks up. Overcast, but... no rain.

He shakes his head.

\--- 

The door begins to move. Kretsch thinks he may have enough time to just turn around and--

Yvette appears in the threshold.

Kretsch backs away slightly in surprise.

They stand there, blinking at each other in the dim morning light. Suddenly Kretsch feels out of place--not from the cuts and splinters in his hands and pine sap in the grooves of his palms, no. But almost as if... 

"Paul! Holy shit-- _Paul,_ " and Yvette has thrown her arms around him, and suddenly he feels weak, like his joints are no longer there, but he remains standing somehow.

"Hello to you too, Yves," he says. Death in all its colors flows away from her, from this place. For now. All that remains of it--

"I saw the news, and you and Jan were going to Arcadia, and--" She looks beyond Kretsch's shoulder at his SUV, adorned in scratches and leaves and mud. "Are they--?"

Kretsch just nods. "Their home's... gone. Just three of them, good kids. Before I go back, can you... ?"

"Paul, absolutely. Don't you even ask." 

"Okay." He takes a breath. "Okay. Could you get the heat on, and some blankets--?"

But Yvette is already out of sight. So Kretsch stands there on the doorstep, looking inside, into that warmth and light, wondering if he has the mettle to stand between four walls again.

\---

He blinks. It's unsettling to see them in ordinary clothes, after the way they were bundled up like--like astronauts, or deep-sea divers. They look skinless.

\---

The house is louder and livelier, yes. But it feels more empty than the last. Just air and nothing else. Air and a brief flutter of noise.

It's a litany of phone calls. Every light in the house is on and Kretsch can't find his own shadow but he's fine with that.

\---

"When's the last time you've gotten any sleep?"

_I've been asleep ever since the day I was born, my whole life, until last night. That's when I woke up and saw the world for what it really was, and now I can't close my eyes. ___

__"Eighteen hours... or thereabout." He drags a hand through his hair, brings back a pine needle. "Time flies when you're busy."_ _

__\---_ _

__He lays in the upstairs bed and tries to sleep but some things are not meant to be._ _

__He can hear them downstairs--the clinking of glasses, footsteps, music, talking, the occasional laughter--but it seems rather distant._ _

__\---_ _

__"Did Jan stay?"_ _

__Yes, she did. "Yves..."_ _

__Her face falls. This was years coming. It was just a question of how._ _

__"She got swept away... pulling Rachel out of the current. Almost didn't get her out in time, but..." Kretsch shrugs, looking away._ _

__"Oh, God," Yvette whispers. "Paul--"_ _

__And she wraps her arms around him tight, and he thinks that she's the only thing keeping him from falling to pieces._ _

__He wishes she would let go. But she doesn't._ _

__\---_ _

__Max is tired. They're all tired but Max is _tired._ Her entire body is twitching with the nervous energy of exhaustion._ _

__They're sitting there, up in the guest room, coffee in hand. They watch the rain strike the window._ _

__Rain. This is the kind of thing that should be traumatizing, but somehow, it's grounding. They can hear Chloe and Rachel and Yvette downstairs. Fast friends. Yvette does that to people._ _

__"It's not your fault, Max."_ _

__When he says it into the silence, he feels a sudden lightness. There was... some burden pressing down on his chest, before._ _

__"I saw--er, well--heard... everything."_ _

__Max's eyes widen. "Wait--everything? You mean--"_ _

__"Yeah."_ _

__Max looks somewhere between embarrassed and ashamed--but underneath that is relief, a relief in that she won't have to explain the ordeal all over again._ _

__He dwells upon something reassuring to say. He decides: "You're just a kid, Max."_ _

__"I'm eighteen."_ _

__"Right, otherwise known as a kid. If I had... you know..." He lifts his right hand, stretches out his fingers-- "I would've done the same in my life at your age--or even now." He would've done more. "Anyone would have. It's in our nature, isn't it? To try and make things better?" To destroy anything that stood between life and love, even if nothing remained._ _

__He tries to punctuate that thought with a sip from his coffee, but it's too hot._ _

__"Are you... religious, Mr. Kretsch?"_ _

__He glances at Max. "Oh, no. Or... non-practicing. If there is a god... or gods..." He shakes his head. He is quiet for a moment, and then: "I've seen too much cruelty and senselessness, Max. I can't see that justified."_ _

__Max nods. "My dad was Catholic. Uh, Irish Catholic. But he never pushed it on me." She bites her lip. "When I was really young, we'd go to Christmas mass. But I think that was just because my nan wanted us to."_ _

__"I've heard that one before."_ _

__There's a moment of quiet when the unspoken question lingers in the air between them._ _

__"I don't--" Kretsch shakes his head. "I don't think this changes... anything. About... gods or hells anything. I've never prayed before, and I'm not going to start now." He exhales. "I don't--I think--just some things are beyond us. That's all. And we have to live with that."_ _

__Max looks down into her coffee._ _

__"You'll have to live with that," he says, gentle but solemn._ _

__"I know," she says._ _

__Silence, again. Then:_ _

__"I..." an unsteady intake of breath. "I... I'm so sorry about Jan. I--I tried, I--"_ _

__Kretsch thinks of the most Jankowskian thing he can do. He decides to pat Max maternally on the shoulder._ _

__"Jan and I... live like this for a reason. She always wants to--well, not just hand out blankets and water and stuff. But show people that we can get through the worst things imaginable. Prove it to other people... and herself, I think." He feels a rising warmth behind his eyes. He ignores it. "She wants this for you." He gestures behind him. "She wants you three to have something more than that house and that night."_ _

__Max exhales, and nods._ _

__"I want you to have a life. I don't hate you for any of this. Don't think that for a second back there we ever considered..." The words don't come for there are no words for what that was. He waves his hand. "We would never, Max."_ _

__"I wouldn't blame you if you did."_ _

__Krestch just shakes his head. "You'll understand when the time comes. I promise."_ _

__He curses himself for saying 'time.'_ _


	9. Kretsch

She moves quickly.

She drives up the thermostat to 80--damn the electric bill to electric hell--and dashes up the stairs to hunt down the spare blankets. The clean ones, anyway. 

When she returns to the living room, Kretsch and the three girls have already made their way in--sort of. One of them is limp in Kretsch's arms, streaks of old blood encrusted down her jaw.

She foregoes the polite obviation of a 'is she okay' and instead begins with: "What does she need?"

"That couch," Kretsch says, jutting his chin at the one in front of the TV. "And blankets, and water, and... time," he says, but his voice snags oddly on the last word. He lowers her onto the couch, careful of her neck, turning her head to the side.

Dumping the blankets in a chair, Yvette nods. "Done. What do _you_ need?" she asks, turning to the two other girls.

The tall one with the tattoo gives a slight start--she had been staring intently at the unconscious girl. "I..."

"We're okay," the other chimes in. Tattoo girl's shoulders sag in relief. "Really. And thank you for letting us stay, I know this was short notice--" Kretsch shoots her a raised eyebrow, but she pointedly ignores it.

Yvette can't help but smile at that. "Stay as long as you like. A friend of Paul is a friend of mine." She extends an open hand. "Yvette. Or Yves, if you like."

She sees it--almost thinks she imagines it--the girl tenses, draws back. But then she grasps Yvette's hand firmly, smiling in the peculiar way that those too versed in false smiles do. Her canines are just slightly too large for her mouth and canted inward--endearing, predatory. "Rachel."

Yvette turns her head to the other. 

The tattoo girl looks over, flicking her eyes to the carpet under Yvette's gaze. Her fists are shoved into her jeans. "... I'm Chloe." She's back to watching the sleeping girl. "That's... that's Max."

\---

In her way, her very Yvettish way, Yvette studies them. Dilated pupils lingering on the periphery, looking askance. 

That duo couldn't be more different, she thinks. 

Certain things were similar--the pallor, the dark circles under the eyes, the little tremors of exhaustion, the way they twitched at sound or movement, their pupils too big.

But there were others. Rachel's chin held high, shoulders back and straight, composed even with her legs folded on a couch. 

Chloe, head always tilted this way or that, her body languid and forming against the chair she's occupied next to Max--but coiled, ready. Metal under load, ready to snap and decapitate.

But there's something else--the way they look at each other, the way how when one moves about the room the other, too, moves in some way. Like they're caught in each other's orbit.

The brief, ghosting touches. The way Chloe presses her hand against Max's forehead.

Warms the heart, in a way. But miserable to behold.

\---

People would feel Kretsch's shadow pass over them, like some dark cool sun, and take shelter under it. That's who he was.

But now? Kretsch was the shadow, growing longer across the ground but beginning nowhere. Yvette almost passes through him, once or twice. Kretsch used to be such a presence. A monument. But now...

\---

They stand there in the kitchen for a little too long. She looks down at Kretsch's boots, and tracks they left. The rest were glad to shed their shoes, full of leaves and mud and dampness. Yet Kretsch---

"Where's Logan?"

Yvette has to stare at Kretsch for a moment. She thought he had fallen asleep standing up. "Seattle, on work. He'll be back tomorrow."

He nods absently. "Good." He makes an amused, chuffing noise. "Hope he doesn't mind guests."

"Paul... I think you should sit down."

He doesn't look at her. "Why?"

"You're..." she rolls her hand, feeling the air for the right word. "... Swaying."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not."

"Yves, if I say I'm fine--"

"You lie all the time. Sit down." 

"No."

Yvette huffs. Would expect this out of Jan, not Paul.

"Did Jan stay?"

Kretsch grows still.

\---

Raised voices in the living room. Max must have woken up.

But Yvette can only look upon Kretsch with muted terror as he speaks the truth into being like a despondent god.

\---

She would tell people that Jan and Paul could never be anything less than the best of friends. Had they married, their bond would've been something less invoking to awe. She envied it, sometimes. She loves Logan--loves him so much she sometimes feels like her heart will erupt from her chest just to be closer to him--but the love between Jan and Paul is this blinding, platonic thing that's too much to look upon for too long. Could twins even be so close? 

"You feel like you should've done something differently?"

"No, no. It's... she knew, I knew. For a long time. It's just..." He palms at his eyes. "I thought we had a few more years before one of us had to go. She's... she's still here, Yves. I can feel her, but she's gone. What--what the fuck is this?"

"Paul, this is--"

"It's not normal, this isn't normal. I'm--I just--"

He's silent and still and unblinking, and Yvette holds her breath, praying to whoever could listen that Kretsch wasn't having a nervous breakdown. Not now.

"I just... I'll... get used to it," he says tiredly. "It's like anything else. This is living. This is life."

\---

Yvette put something on the TV--some documentary serious about cute animals or something. She debated between the calm of silence and something to distract them--and had to flip a mental coin. Hedgehogs and foxes it was. But the three could only watch it with so much interest, as they were texting and calling back and forth with so many people. It gave Yvette some hope to see that. That they weren't alone in all this.

She watches the water boil, tapping her thumb against knuckles. One-two-three-four. The gooseneck kettle seems to be raising an arm in inquiry, steam billowing from an outstretched steel hand.

Yvette lines up the cups and pours the tea--she chose black, but looking down into the cups she wonders if she should've chosen a more kindly green. She never did know if they were actually curiously large cups, or rather small soup bowls with handles--but she will puzzle that out in quieter times.

Kretsch is still standing there, staring at the coffee machine as it drips away. She pushes that unsettling image out of her mind. Brown sugar and milk for Rachel, a bit of honey and a thin slice of lime (out of lemons) for Max, but Chloe... Yvette furrows her brow. She comes off as more of a coffee person... so straight tea it is, then.

She brings the tea out to the living room and sets it on the coffee table. Yvette looks up at Chloe. "Can you guess which one is for you?"

The corner of Chloe's mouth turns up like a jackknife falling closed. "... Thanks," she says softly.

"Don't burn yourself," Yvette says automatically. Then, with a bit more poise, she says: "Give me a few minutes. I'll make you all something. Maybe... pancakes?"

Max is the first off the line. She shifts, blanket bunching in her lap. "You don't have to--"

"I know. But I _want_ to. You won't keep me from doing what I want, will you?" She fixes Max with a sly glance, but softens her expression at the girl's seriousness. "Max, it's fine. It's pretty much breakfast anyway, isn't it?"

She returns to the kitchen without looking back, relaxing slightly at hearing the three speak quietly amongst themselves. Kretsch is still standing there.

"Coffee's done," he intones.

"Paul, go upstairs."

He turns to her, but his expression doesn't change. "I--"

"You're scaring the hell out of me. Jan _dies,_ " the words roll strangely off her tongue, misshapen--"and now--now you're--" She bites it back, squeezes her eyes shut just long enough before pinning Kretsch with a look. 

Kretsch takes a deep breath. Looks at anything but her. "I'm--"

"Don't even say it. When you're--when you're back, when you're _you,_ come down. You're scaring them too."

He takes that long, slow breath again. New air, same lungs. "When I'm me," he murmurs, brow furrowing. Something flickers across his face. "Yeah. I--yeah. Okay." He turns on his heel with the scrape of dirt and heads deeper into the house.

But before he passes into the hallway, he says gently, "I love you, Yves."

"Love you too, Paul," Yves whispers, too quiet to hear.

But he hears her.


	10. Yvette

It is 6:13AM.

Cinnamon-apple-pancakes aren't exactly disaster recovery protocol, but Yvette isn't afraid of improvisation. In a way, she appreciates it--gives her something to do. Keeps her from having to sit awkwardly in the living room, listening to phonecall after tearful phonecall. 

Brown sugar instead of white, a dusting of lime zest. Stacks of two, of course. Stress burns through calories like nothing else, so a few dense pancakes should be adequate.

The lime is a nice change, too, cutting through the miasma of dread in the air.

Kretsch materializes from behind her, carefully sets a mug of coffee on the counter, slides it towards her. Coffee's just nearly at the rim, on the verge of overflowing, just how she likes it.

"Here," he utters.

She glances up at him, and--

_You cut him open, and there's nothing inside. Cut him in half and he falls into two clean pieces. Smooth. Doesn't smell like anything because--_

_Shit, Paul, wherever you are, come back._

Yvette grabs his hand in hers. Tight enough to hurt. "I need you to stay with me, Paul." In his state, does it matter if she says it once or twice? No. Not really. 

His hand isn't cold... it's not warm, either. Blood--some semblance of it-- flows through all the same.

He looks down at his hand, the white knuckles, the too-taut skin, the veins standing out blue and grey, blinking, as if all of this is a new development in his domain. But then he nods, once, chin to the chest. Then he looks up at her, nods again.

She can see straight to the back of his head when she looks into those darkened sockets. Right through, bang, her vision pings off the far wall of his skull. But, unsettlingly enough, she can see the Paul she knows in there. Hidden amongst other things, suffocatingly so, but still Paul, or a kind of Paul she knows from somewhere.

"I stopped sulking in the attic, didn't I?"

She flips a pancake without breaking her stare. Flap. Hiss. "I mean it."

"I know, I'm--" He pauses. Works his jaw, aligns his teeth. "I'm _here._ I'm back."

_Where did you go?_ She wants to ask. But she drowns the question in coffee.

\---

Paul isn't the kind of man to inspire fear. He _has_ fears, mundane ones at that, but doesn't rouse them in others. But Yvette is a little afraid of him, now, in a way--in her own way.

She's afraid, yes, we've established that. Not for what he'll do-- But for what he might _say_ , and other terrible things he'll reveal to her, and what he will remember or recall or realize. 

She knows he's holding back. The truth is crucified to the back of his mouth. It's just a matter of time before his great fall, before playwrights shrug and jot 'EXEUNT OMNES,' before he breaks and his pieces spell something she never wanted to see.

Yvette is ready to catch him. But she's afraid he will simply break against her, too.

\---

The name of the day is Friday, October 11th, 2013. Earth time. Solar time. Human time. 

Something about that particular date seems familiar to Kretsch. More familiar than most dates, anyway. 

He focuses on it. Dwells on it. Remembers it. Becomes it, at length.

11\. 10. 2013.

Wasn't his birth... or his death, he thinks wryly. Kretsch isn't one to really mark up calendars. More of an addendum kind of guy. Reminders scrawled on the backs of envelopes, marked up in the margins.

October eleventh. 

Something happened October eleventh, last year. 

\---

Alexis. Ashley. Beverly. Brittany. Carol-Ann. Cassidy. Chelsea. Crystal. Deanna. Kayla. Kelly. Lucy. Lula. Lynn. Marissa. Suzie. Sydney. Tyra.

The names rise and fall in Kretsch's head like a bloodwarm tide, trickling down the wall.

\---

Yvette arranges the logs in the hearth--or tries to. She narrows her eyes at the sorry Stonehenge of wood.

She can't remember the last time she even made a fire. Last year, perhaps--or longer. But despite that, hell, a crackling fire, a few scattered vanilla candles, rain outside, a cup of tea, Kretsch idling around like a friendly coat rack--with enough pleasant ambience, maybe she can soften the hammerblow of trauma.

Or soften the anvil, she thinks bitterly.

Rachel watches closely from over her shoulder. At first, Yvette ignores her--truly, Yvette may be the best of them all when it comes to ignoring people. But then:

"You ever in the Girl Scouts, Rach?"

Rachel draws back. Yvette has more voice than her stature suggests. "I--no, I was court-martialed for fraternizing with the Boy Scouts," she quips with admirable quickness, but it is staggered, halting, any effect lost. Somewhere behind, Max huffs a weak laugh from over by the bookshelves. The that kind of supportive laugh that rises from something heartfelt. 

"'Cause if you have some suggestions for my firestarting, I'm all ears. Arson and structure fires are more in my line of work."

\---

"You all right, Paul?"

"Yeah," he says automatically.

He means it. Or, rather, his body means it, in the way it formed and produced the words so quickly.

\---

They're all kind of sweaty, now. Kretsch is still in his jacket (he finally took off his boots after realizing that he was the source of the muddy footprints), but the girls have ditched their socks and their brows all have bit of a sheen. Yvette punches the thermostat down to 70. Her eyeballs are starting to dry out.

"Well, while your clothes are in the wash... now is as good a time as any for showers," Yvette remarks.

When it's Max's turn for the shower, Kretsch pulls Chloe aside--no small feat given the presence of pancakes, but he manages it. 

"Every ten minutes, knock."

Exasperation flickers in Chloe's eyes--but a sober understanding, too. "Yeah," she murmurs. 

"Just ask her about... using the hot water, or the biggest towel, or all the conditioner, or... something," he finishes lamely. 

They stand in silence for a moment.

"You made it this far, Chloe," he says quietly. "She made it this far. Just--"

"I know, I know," she says sharply. Slower, then: "I know."

\---

Yvette brushes out Rachel's hair after the shower. Rachel managed to wash out the mud and sticks and leaves, but the knots? Not quite.

Chloe watches with something just slightly approaching jealousy. 

"You want to take over, Chloe? I need to make a call."

Chloe gives a start, reddens, caught as she is. "I... oh, yeah, sure."

\---

"It's for you," Chloe says, jabbing the phone at Krestch. He notes Chloe's stony expression before taking it from her and taking the call.

"Mr. David Madsen?"

"Who am I speaking to?" That tone... Kretsch represses a sigh. 

"Paul A. Kretsch, Urban Search and Rescue, Washington Task Force 1." He lets that formal rigidity settle into his voice, warp into someone else's. Chloe's eyebrows rise. He shrugs at her. "Thank you for calling. Your daughter and her friends have been relocated to a safe area outside Portland. What is your status?"

There's a pause. "Arcadia Bay has been--" Another pause. "The power grid is down and the water mains have been contaminated. Numerous roads are blocked by mudslides and, uh, debris--" Kretsch can hear movement on the other end. A car door closing. Wind. "Casualties are... high. Is Chloe--?"

"Understood. The highway out of Arcadia Bay cannot be passed by civilian vehicles without four-wheel-drive or suitable ground clearance. I cannot get a line of communication to ABPD--I need you to inform them to blockade that road so emergency vehicles can enter."

"I'll get on it double-time," he says. "But... my daughter..."

Kretsch waits. 

"Chloe is asleep right now. Aside from scraped elbows and knees, she is uninjured. Her friends are stable as well." Kretsch works his jaw. "I will see that she is taken care of, Madsen."

\---

"So... Max's parents are going to drive down and get them."

Kretsch nods. This is, really, the best case scenario. He should be relieved that Max's parents weren't living in Arcadia Bay, too. Otherwise...

"What is it?"

Kretsch shakes his head. "Nothing. I just--I feel bad moving them anywhere, right now. But--" He casts his gaze around the kitchen. "I know keeping them in here like grounded kids won't help them, either."

"I'm sure they can handle one car ride," Yvette says.

"Yeah."

\---

There's a year of someone else's lifetime--lifetimes--folded into his head.

It has nowhere to go. No proper place. His memories don't run parallel with these new ones--they're interspersed, meshed, fused. 

But... they aren't quite right. They aren't memories of place, of the five senses. They're not even memories. They're just... knowing. It's not as if he saw what Max saw, or heard what she heard--it's like he was an observer, trapped behind her the whole time.

\---

Kretsch walks into den to see Yvette looking down at her phone.

"Do you remember Raimi?"

He doesn't. The name passes through him. "Sort of. I'd know her if I saw her, I think."

"She was living in Arcadia Bay," she says, an odd flatness to her voice. "I haven't spoken to her in--years, maybe--but I wondered--"

"Yvette," Kretsch pleads, "Don't."

"Have you seen the pictures? It looks like Hiroshima--"

"Fuck, Yvette, why--"

"Sorry. God, I'm sorry," the words rush out, but Kretsch is already elsewhere.

\---

Something moves across his vision. Kretsch glances out the window. Blinks.

He thought he saw--by the streetlight, just beyond the fence, on the other side of the street--

No. There was nothing there. They're safe, here.

But he watches longer, all the same.

\---

It's the mark of a coward, but he does it anyway.

When the others are busy with something or other, he slips away and checks the closets.

Nothing there. Of course.

When he turns around, Max ducks her head back around the corner.

\---

He's trying to protect them from... Arcadia Bay, the world, everything.

Or, maybe, he's trying to protect everything from them. He has already seen what they can do.

\---

Rachel is sitting in front of the fire.

Quite close to it.

Kretsch manages to resist the initial "don't burn yourself," but as he draws nearer and feels the heat of the flames, the way Rachel is leaning forward with such intent, and he knows how embers can jump and how hair can catch--

"Hey. Maybe not so close?"

Rachel doesn't turn around. "I'm cold."

Jan would have left it at that. Nodded to herself and walked away. Something flickers in his head, a corona flaring too bright around his brain. Is this anger?

He exhales--too forcefully. Rachel tilts her head. "I'm sorry, Kretsch. I--" She breathes in deeply. The fire seems to swell with her. "This is hardly fair to you, is it?" She stands, thankfully, and turns--but is no farther from the flames.

"This isn't about me."

Rachel frowns. 

"This isn't about Jan, either."

At that, Rachel flinches.

Chloe is in the shower (for twenty minutes?) and Max is helping Yvette in... the kitchen, or something. 

"You said _'no one else,'_ Rachel." He watches warily as she crosses the room to the window. "Before--"

"I remember," she says coolly. Her spine is curiously straight as she watches the rain strike the glass.

"I'm not going to tell you have to live your life, or how to live with Max and Chloe--" Her shoulders stiffen at that-- "But what you feel now..."

"Is not how I'm going to always feel. Because as circumstances change, so too will my perspective," she recites.

"... Yeah, pretty much," Kretsch says.

Rachel sighs. "She barely knew me," she murmurs. "She barely knows me. But then--"

Kretsch glances back at the fire--it's easier to look at than Rachel in this state. "She loves Chloe. Chloe loves you. Anyone could make sense of that."

Her shoulders sag. "I... was talking about Jan."

"Oh." A pause. "Would you believe me if I told you that in those two hours, Jan really cared about you?"

Rachel is silent.

"Even if she... wasn't exactly great at showing it whatsoever?"

Maybe it's his imagination, but Kretsch thinks he can see the ghost of Rachel's half-smile in the windowpane. "She... certainly had a way about her. A woman apart."

Had. Past tense. Kretsch ignores it and continues. "And I do too?"

"Is that so?" she peers at him over her shoulder, whisped in newly blow-dried hair. "What's my favorite color, then?"

"Blue, based on the earring. And Chloe," he adds.

Rachel's eyes widen, and for a moment Kretsch curses himself--

But then she laughs.

"You're so peculiar," she says, shaking her head.

"People are peculiar," he shoots back defensively. 

"But your particular peculiarity is a welcome one," she assures. 

\---

When they were in the--when they were outside Arcadia Bay, Jan and Kresch gave them a quick glance--for open wounds, signs of shock, things like that--before setting to fortify. But now, safe as they are, Kresch and Yvette can sit and tend to them more carefully. With the grime and muck showered away, the old oversights become more apparent.

Scratches and scrapes and darkening bruises--minor things, eliciting no more than winches and an the occasional "ouch" from Max or "fuck" from Chloe, through Rachel is curiously silent. A swab of povidone-iodine, a thin coating of petrolatum, and small bandages--not much needed, thankfully. Kretsch hates setting bones. He always makes Jan do it.

Max's eyes are still faintly red. But they don't have eyedrops for those who have seen too much, he thinks, mouth twisting. He smooths his expression when he sees concern in the redness. 

Kretsch carefully turns their hands over--noting the small cuts on the knuckles, fingers. Hardly worth worrying over, if you asked Yvette--but from the intensity with which Kretsch goes about his work, Yvette says nothing of it. The girls look slightly ridiculous, afterward, what with being so covered in plasters. 

"Could've just used super glue," Chloe grumbles. "Always worked for me."

"I could have sworn that skater kids just applied spit and deck tape to all of their battle wounds," Rachel remarks dryly. Chloe sticks her tongue out at her.

"Sorry, landlubber, my saliva is at a premium--"

Kretsch rolls his eyes and tunes out the rest. He notes the litany of threadlike scars woven into the skin of her hands--and the less threadlike ones along her wrists. He looked up at Chloe when he saw them--but she just shook her head, shrugged.

\---

And there it is, finally. Finally. Kretsch had been waiting so long, because it had been only a matter of time.

Thunder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Scattered all about, pieces rather than prose. But it fits, I suppose._


End file.
